Smoke and flames billow from a burning vehicle following a shooting and multi-car accident on the Las Vegas Strip, Feb. 21, 2013. / Erik Lackey, AP

by USA TODAY

by USA TODAY

LAS VEGAS (AP) - A manhunt has widened to southeastern U.S. states for a 26-year-old ex-convict identified as the prime suspect in a shooting and fiery crash that killed three last week on the Las Vegas Strip, police said Monday.

Ammar Harris used to live in South Carolina and Georgia, he was convicted in Atlanta in 2005 of marijuana possession, and he was arrested in Miami in December on a reckless driving charge, according to public records.

Harris also was arrested in June 2010 in Las Vegas on pandering, kidnapping, sex assault and coercion charges stemming from allegations that he was a pimp. He sometimes goes by the name Ammar Asim Faruq Harris.

Investigators believe Harris was the driver and the gunman who fired shots from a black Range Rover SUV into a Maserati, killing an aspiring rapper and causing a crash and explosion that killed two people when a taxi exploded in a fireball before dawn Thursday at the heart of the Strip.

"We have him identified," Las Vegas police Capt. Chris Jones said. "Now the focus is on locating and apprehending him. We're getting help all over the place."

A SWAT team didn't find Harris at his home after the SUV was found parked Saturday in the garage of a gated apartment complex a couple of blocks east of the Strip.

The SUV had been sought as the getaway vehicle in the shooting and six-vehicle, chain-reaction crash on Las Vegas Boulevard near the Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Bally's and Flamingo resorts.

Kenneth Wayne Cherry Jr. was mortally wounded when the dark gray Maserati he was driving was peppered by gunfire from the SUV. Taxi driver Michael Boldon and passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund of Maple Valley, Wash., died in the taxi.

Police say the triple homicide stemmed from an altercation between Cherry and Harris in a valet area of the upscale Aria resort a block south of the crash scene at Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road.

A passenger in the Maserati was wounded in the arm, and four people from four other vehicles were treated for non-life-threatening injuries after the crash

Police released a photo of Harris taken following his arrest in Las Vegas in the prostitution case. The disposition of the case wasn't immediately known.

The photo showed Harris with tattoos on his right cheek and words on his neck above an image that appeared to depict an owl with blackened eyes. Jones said Harris should be considered armed and dangerous.

Las Vegas police sought help during the search for the Range Rover from local and federal authorities in Nevada and neighboring states of Arizona, California and Utah.

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